


i bleed the taste of life

by aiineslin



Series: you turn myself to me, and recognise the poison in my heart [1]
Category: Orange is the New Black
Genre: Character Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 04:06:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15549237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aiineslin/pseuds/aiineslin
Summary: Sisterhood isn't easy.





	i bleed the taste of life

**Author's Note:**

> unbeta'ed. i apologise for any grammatical errors beforehand.  
> portishead accompanied me throughout the writing process of this fic.  
> title taken from lyrics to we carry on by portishead.  
> as a note, most of these are written from young!carol’s perspective, with the exception of the last vignette.  
> I can be found at thedennings.tumblr.com, feel free to pop by to chat!

Parents weren’t supposed to admit they had a favourite, but Carol wasn’t _stupid_.

Debbie and her gappy smile, sweet little voice and neat brown hair was Dad and Mom’s favourite from the moment she was born.

“She was my easiest birth,” Mom would say to the aunts and uncles and cousins that gathered at their house every Christmas. “Slid out of me smooth as butter. Didn’t bite my nipples when I breastfed her, unlike _someone_.”

And here she would cut a meaningful glance towards Carol, and Dad would snort out a small laugh, and this went on and on for years until Carol said in her brassy voice to the aunts and uncles and cousins, “Yeah well, she still made your titties saggy with the breastfeeding, didn’t she?”

Carol went to bed that year with ringing ears, a blossoming bruise on her face and a shaky tooth but Mom stopped talking about Debbie and her perfect, painless breastfeeding adventures after that. Barbara stole ice for Carol to rest against her aching cheek that night and whispered congratulatory comments to her all through the hours of darkness until Carol fell asleep, grinning against the dull throbbing pain in her face.

 *

She smoked her first cigarette when she was ten, hiding out where the bins were at some shitty little school located in Oklahoma.

They had uprooted themselves from Wisconsin for _Debbie_ , for some coach that came with glowing reviews and gymnastic championship trophies tacked to her name, and of course Carol and Barbara had to go along with it. Never mind Barbara’s first boyfriend, never mind Carol’s chess club activities. 

Life in the town was slow; kids made their own entertainment.

Thieving was a popular activity to pass time and test nerve and skill – it even came with an extra perk, you got _free shit_.

Thieving did not come easy to Carol.

Something about her twitchiness, the way her eyes flicked and darted and ran all over the place, it screamed thief even when she wasn’t thieving.

Frankly, Carol was not too bothered by this; _Barbara_ was free to go sneaking around stuffing goodies down her shirt and pants while Carol wandered the aisles, drawing the attentions of the salespeople.

So there they were, Carol and Barbara, standing beside a few stinking great bins. It was Barbara’s grand idea, to swipe some smokes to get in good with the cool kids at their new school; after all, the coolest and baddest children in their previous school had access to those little white sticks.

Barbara had already lit up, and Carol was jiggling from one foot to another, fists in her pockets as she squinted at Barbara, watching the other inhale shakily, sputtering out little poots of smoke. It was definitely not the glorious white plumes of artfully blown smoke Carol had seen the cool kids at her old school puff out.

“It ain’t done like that,” Carol blurted out after one too many weak little smoke clouds. “Pass me the smokes.”

“I think I’m getting the hang of it,” snapped Barbara, coughing a little. But she handed over the little plastic lighter and the Marlboro Menthols, her lips pinched into a sulk as she watched Carol dig her thumb against the sparkwheel.

The first few attempts at lighting a flame were futile, drawing nothing but orange sparks and a smug snort from Barbara. The fourth yielded a bright flame, Carol flicking a vindicated smirk at Barbara as she brought the fire to lick against her cigarette.

The smirk did not last long; the first harsh cloud of smoke hit her throat full force and sparked a coughing fit, causing the cigarette to shoot right out of Carol’s mouth to land on the dirty floor.

Beside her, Barbara laughed – ugly, hacking little shrieks that she only produced when around Carol, so thoroughly unlike the affected giggles she put on in front of boys and family.

“Bitch,” coughed Carol, slapping Barbara’s arm angrily, tears beading at the corners of her eyes.

“Mm-hmm, and _someone_ here wanted to teach _me_ how to smoke,” drawled Barbara. She spat her own half-smoked cigarette out, grinding out the ember distastefully with the heel of her foot. “Anyways, this tastes like shit. Fuck this.”

“I ain’t a quitter,” said Carol, tucking the Menthols and the lighter into her pocket. “Unlike you.”

Barbara surveyed Carol coolly, dark eyes narrowing slightly. And then she snorted, tossed her hair carelessly and shrugged. “If you say so, kid. If you say so.”

*

Carol may not like Debbie very much, but her aimless, irritable dislike was nothing, _nothing_ compared to the depth of hatred Barbara felt for the girl.

Barbara, Carol knew, used to be the most-loved before little Debbie appeared on the scene with her preternaturally flexible limbs and puppy-like willingness to do as she was told.

When little Debbie appeared, Barbara was shunted out of the limelight and into the darkness to join Carol, the _bad kid_.

Gone was the praise, the comments about how good her grades were, the deliciousness of her apple pies and how popular and well-liked she was.

Here came the sharp, pointed comments about how her academics were not up to par, how apple pies were unhealthy and fattening for little Debbie, how excessive socialisation could lead to the ruin of a good girl from a good family.

Barbara smiled her way through all this, closed-lipped smiles curling beneath shuttered eyes.

Where Carol would have broken down, shouted and screamed and thrown a fit, Barbara withdrew into herself and waged a silent, subtle war.

Carol was caught in the crossfire once – when she came down with a bad bout of food poisoning after eating a dinner Barbara had served.

“Sorry,” Barbara had said as she sat beside Carol, keeping a hand over her nose as the other girl tossed and turned, groaning in her rumpled bed. The smell of sickness and vomit hung heavy in the room. “I thought I told you not to eat dinner yesterday.”

“Next time,” Carol had hissed, lighting feverish eyes on Barbara. She could only see Barbara’s eyes, and they were crinkled slightly in the corners. Amusement. “Keep me out of your little games.”

So saying, she lunged forward and puked yellow-green bile right on to Barbara’s cerulean blue sweater, taking a vindictive pleasure in her sister’s furious shrieks.

*

She would keep this a secret to her dying day, but quite frankly, Carol never thought they would get away with the murder.

They put on a convincing show when they arrived home, true. Barbara sobbed her heart out, Carol affected a sullen exterior and for a moment, their parents were convinced.

But holes began to appear in their story; the police officers took far too great an interest in little Debbie’s case. (“Still best loved even in death,” Barbara had said once bitterly, when they were seated in the back of the police van, cuffs heavy around their wrists.)

Their hastily put together lie was surgically taken apart, and their crime and faces were paraded before court and media.

Infamy came with its perks; Barbara and Carol received fan letters from strange men and women all around the country. When they were taken into Litchfield, they came with a certain notoriety attached to them, and this notoriety was cemented when Carol punched a top dog in the face on their second day.

Prison, Carol decided, was very much like high school.

Make your mark fast and hard, and you were on the fast track to the throne.

*

Gossip travelled fast in prison, because prison was essentially a small town – you made your own entertainment, and there wasn’t much entertainment beyond killing, fucking and gossiping.

Barbara ODing on her stash travelled lightning fast around the prison; all of D-Block saw her collapsing on to the ground, all of D-Block saw her being carted out by two guards, and inmates from all blocks saw her screaming and thrashing in a bed up at Medical.

It took a while, it took money – _plenty_ of it – and a good amount of favours burnt, but when Carol had her eyes set on a goal, nothing was going to stop her from achieving it.

“Hey Barbie,” said Carol, leaning against the doorway.

The fluorescent lights were darkened, a t-shirt fixed over them.

Barbara was huddled under a blanket, dark curls peeking out from beneath it.

Ten, twenty, thirty seconds ticked past with no acknowledgement, and Carol stepped into the cell, crossing over to the bunk bed in two great steps. She sat down heavily on to the bed, the springs squeaking under her additional weight.

“Go ‘way,” Barbara’s voice was a muffled croak. The blanket scrunched a little as the woman attempted to pull it tighter around herself, but Carol had made sure to situate herself directly on the blanket edges when she sat down, and after a few moments of futile tugging, Barbara gave up.

“Nah,” said Carol. “Nah.”

“I’ll jam a fucking toothbrush into your eye.”

“Like you got the strength to do it.”

They sat in the dimness for a few moments, Carol staring into the distance, Barbara’s breathing growing ever more uneven and louder as the seconds went by.

“How the fuck did you even get in here anyway?”

“Greased a few palms here and there.”

“Sounds expensive.”

“Very,” said Carol, leaning back slightly, allowing herself to rest against the warm, unmoving lump that was Barbara. “But I just wanted to visit my dear sister, y’know. Ain’t nothing keeping me away from her. Not guards. Not Douche-Block bitches.”

“D-Block bitches,” corrected Barbara with no real heat in her voice. “Jesus, don’t you ever stop and fucking think? How much money did you burn just to get in here?”

“I didn’t waste all this money just to hear you bitch and moan at me,” snapped Carol, an abrupt wave of anger washing over her, heat rising in her face. Barbara had always been like this, _always_ a complainer, always looking gift horses in the mouths. “Look, if you want me out, I’ll fuck off. If you want me here, just shut the fuck up and let me -”

“God,” muttered Barbara, and the blanket shifted a little, dropping down to reveal a chalky face and shadowed eyes.

“Goddamn. You look like _shit_ ,” said Carol, her tirade interrupted by the awe that overtook her at the sight of her sister. It was the first time, she realised, that she had seen her older, appearance-conscious sister look anything but put-together.

“Always a first time for everything,” croaked Barbara. “How long did you get?”

“Gotta go before lights-out. Got you Noxzema.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Come here.”

So saying, Barbara made an impatient gesture at Carol to get up, before scooting all the way into the inside of the bed, pressing herself flush against the wall. Carol sighed, kicked off her shoes and swung her legs into the bed, curling up beside Barbara.

“I’m cold,” rasped Barbara. “Get that blanket up over us.”

“You’re real demanding, y’know?”

But Carol acquiesced to the request, pulling the blanket up over them and huddling closer to Barbara. Close-up, her sister smelt terrible and looked worse. Barbara’s eyes slid and slipped over Carol’s face, eyelashes fluttering slightly as her eyelids drooped. Her lips thinned slightly, drawing at the edges to pull into a lop-sided smile.

“Don’t wake me up when you go.”

*

The one and only time someone made a play for their power was when some white supremacist chick found her way into their prison.

(And yes, it was most definitely _their_ prison by then. The new guards were told who the Dennings were as part of their introductory session to the prison, new inmates were inducted into the C- and D-Block gangs the moment they donned the ugly prison uniforms. After all, there were no other gangs. There was only them, the Dennings and their alphabet war.)

She was a transfer from the Deep South, all shaved head, bad tattoos and twangy drawl. She liked to chew at her fingernails, something that Barbara abhorred.

She tried for a little while to make _something_ happen.

The woman slung around racial slurs like she was going to get paid for every n-word or c-word that slid out of her mouth, she swaggered around the prison yard showing off her prison-poked Nazi tattoos, complained profusely about the lack of ideological compatriots in Litchfield.

She was a D-Blocker, and as the first month passed by and Barbara continued to keep her peace, she grew more and more confident, and now she began to run her mouth off about the Dennings – and that, that was when Barbara struck.

Carol still remembered the little squeak that slipped out of the Nazi’s mouth when the shiv was stuck into her belly.

“We don’t do the race thing around here,” Carol told the Nazi, digging the shiv deeper into the woman’s belly. “We do the block thing.”

“God, Carol, that is so lame.” Behind her, Barbara was leaning against the wall, arms folded loosely across her chest as she surveyed the corridors for passing COs.

“You try to come up with smart word-play when you’re sticking someone!” Carol hissed, punctuating her words with hard little stabs into the Nazi’s belly. The smell of shit wafted through the air and Carol took a step back, letting the body fall bonelessly to the ground. “Ugh!”

“Told ya not to go for the belly,” said Barbara, peering around incuriously. “You’ve perforated her intestines.”

“We’re not sitting for the _SATs,_ Barbie.”

Carol watched Barbara’s gaze slide down to the bloody shiv clutched in her white-knuckled fist and Barbara shrugged loosely, stepping away from the wall.

“If I were you, I’d have gone for the throat. What if she had shouted, huh?”

Carol snorted, tossing the shiv on to the corpse.

“Well, it would’ve been all your fault if a CO had come poking their pig noses into our business. Wasn’t it you that set up the distraction?”

“Mm-hmm,” said Barbara agreeably, already strolling off, hands tucked into her pockets. “Still, it definitely would have been neater if you cut her throat.”

“ _God,”_ muttered Carol, quickening her pace to catch up. “Do you ever stop _complaining_?”

*

Sisterhood isn’t easy.

Carol was –

She always knew she was different.

In many ways, she supposed she was lucky Barbara had been around for the first few years of her life.

Here was a compatriot who harboured the same thoughts and wickedness inside her, even though Barbara - clever, clever Barbara had always been better at hiding the darkness.

As she crawled away from Barbara, the knife a red-hot point of pain in the small of her back, Carol felt a small, savage smile cross her face.

At the very least, she had given Barbara a quick and clean death.

She felt darkness gain on her, a dead weight pushing her lids down. The knife's pain was dulling.

Fucking Barbara, she could never do anything righ -

 


End file.
